even to the body, and more especially as it concerns the mind, than the soundness and serenity of our slumbers. After a night of fancy-created tempest, it is not to be expected that we should at once regain our composure. The heaving of the billows continues for some time after the subsidence of the storm; the troubled vibrations survive the delusion which at first occasioned them; the nerves, for some time after the cause has ceased, retain the impression of disorder. The feelings with which we awake, determine, in a great measure, the character of the future day. Each day, indeed, may be regarded as a miniature model of the whole of human life; in which its first seldom fails to give a cast and colour to its succeeding stages. The comfortable or opposite condition of our consciousness immediately subsequent upon sleep, for the most part indicates the degree in

L

which we possess a sound and healthy state of constitution. With those who are in the unbroken vigor of life, the act of awakening is an act of enjoyment; every feeling is refreshed, and every faculty is in a manner regenerated; it is a new birth to a new world; but to the hypochondriacal invalid, or to the untuned and unstrung votary and victim of vicious or frivolous dissipation, the morning light is felt as an intruder. During his perturbed and restless process of convalescence from a diseased dream, he realises, to a certain extent, the well-pictured condition of the unhappy heroine of the Æneid.

"Revoluta toro est, oculisque errantibus alto,

Quæsivit cælo lucem ingemuitque reperta."

147

ESSAY X.

INTEMPERANCE.

"Here's that which is too weak to be a sinner, honest water, which never left man in the mire."

Timon of Athens.

66

As

LIVING fast," is a metaphorical phrase which, more accurately perhaps than is in general imagined, expresses a literal fact. Whatever hurries the action of the corporeal functions must tend to abridge the period of their probable duration. the wheel of a carriage performs a certain number of rotations before it arrives at its destined goal, so to the arteries of the human frame we may conceive that there is allotted only a certain number of pulsations before their vital energy is en

tirely exhausted.

Extraordinary longe

vity has seldom, I believe, been known to occur, except in persons of a remarkably tranquil and slow-paced circulation.

But if intemperance curtailed merely the number of our days, we should have comparatively little reason to find fault with its effects. The idea of "a short life, and a merry one," is plausible enough, if it could be realized. But unfortunately, what shortens existence is calculated also to make it melancholy. There is no process by which we can distil life, so as to separate from it all foul or heterogeneous matter, and leave nothing behind but drops of pure defecated happiness. If the contrary were the case, we should scarcely be disposed to blame the vital extravagance of the voluptuary who, provided that his sun shine brilliant and unclouded as long as it continue above his

head, cares not although it should set at an earlier hour.

It is seldom that debauchery breaks at once the thread of vitality. There occurs, for the most part, a wearisome and painful interval between the first loss of a capacity for enjoying life, and the period of its ultimate and entire extinction. This circumstance, it is to be presumed, is out of the consideration of those persons who, with a prodigality more extravagant than that of Cleopatra, dissolve the pearl of health in the goblet of intemperance. The slope towards the grave these victims of indiscretion find no easy descent. The scene is darkened long before the curtain falls. Having exhausted prematurely all that is pure and delicious in the cup of life, they are obliged to swallow afterwards the bitter dregs. Death is the last, but not the worst result of intemperance.